sfied until I joined him. So I put our things
into storage and went to Braintree. I remained there ten months, and
then came back to Boston. Then I got a position as head matron in the
help's dining-room in a hotel at Watch Hill, R. I. My husband was also
there as waiter. At the end of the season we both came home, and
rented a lodging-house, and lost money on it.

REMINISCENCES

The times changed from slavery days to freedom's days. As young as I
was, my thoughts were mystified to see such wonderful changes; yet I
did not know the meaning of these changing days. But days glided by,
and in my mystified way I could see and hear many strange things. I
would see my master and mistress in close conversation and they seemed
anxious about something that I, a child, could not know the meaning
of.

But as weeks went by, I began to understand. I saw all the slaves one
by one disappearing from the plantation (for night and day they kept
going) until there was not one to be seen.

All around the plantation was left barren. Day after day I could run
down to the gate and see down the road troops and troops of Garrison's
Brigade, and in the midst of them gangs and gangs of negro slaves who
joined with the soldiers, shouting, dancing and clapping their hands.
The war was ended, and from Mobile Bay to Clayton, Ala., all along
the road, on all the plantations, the slaves thought that if they
joined the Yankee soldiers they would be perfectly safe.

As I looked on these I did not know what it meant, for I had never
seen such a circus. The Yankee soldiers found that they had such an
army of men and women and children, that they had to build tents and
feed them to keep them from starving. But from what I, a little child,
saw and heard the older ones say, that must have been a terrible time
of trouble. I heard my master and mistress talking. They said, "Well,
I guess those Yankees had such a large family on their hands, we
rather guessed those fanatics on freedom would be only too glad to
send some back for their old masters to provide for them."

But they never came back to our plantation, and I could only speak of
my own home, but I thought to myself, what would become of my good
times all over the old plantation. Oh, the harvesting times, the great
hog-killing times when several hundred hogs were killed, and we
children watched and got our share of the slaughter in pig's liver
roasted on a bed of coals, eaten ashes and all